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Fifteen hundred years have passed since the 3,500-year reign of the God Emperor Leto II Atreides ended with his assassination; humanity is firmly on the Golden Path, Leto's plan to save humanity from destruction. By crushing the aspirations of humans for over three thousand years, Leto caused the Scattering, an explosion of humanity into the rest of the universe upon his death. Now, some of those who went out into the universe are coming back, bent on conquest. Only the Bene Gesserit perceive the Golden Path and are therefore faced with a choice: keep to their traditional role of hidden manipulators who quietly ease tensions and guide human progress while struggling for their own survival, or embrace the Golden Path and push humanity onward into a new future where humans are free from the threat of extinction. 

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Veronica Sawyer is one of the popular girls at the fictional Westerburg High School in Sherwood, Ohio. She is part of a popular but feared clique that also consists of three other wealthy and beautiful girls with the same first name: Heather Chandler, Heather Duke, and Heather McNamara. She has grown tired of them and longs to return to her old life with her "nerdy" friends. One day, new student and rebellious outsider Jason "J.D." Dean pulls a gun and fires blanks on jocks Kurt Kelly and Ram Sweeney in response to them bullying him. Veronica observes this and finds herself fascinated. She later attends a frat party with Chandler. After refusing to have sex with a frat brother and vomiting on Chandler, the latter vows to destroy her reputation. J.D. shows up at Veronica's house, and they end up having sex outside. They express to each other their mutual hatred of Chandler's tyranny. The next morning, Veronica and J.D. break into Chandler's house. J.D. jokingly puts drain cleaner in a mug with the intention of giving it to Chandler but Veronica quickly shuts him down. She mixes orange juice and milk together instead, as an attempt to make her throw up and get revenge. However, she gets the cups mixed up. J.D. notices this, and hands Chandler the mug with the drain cleaner. She drinks it, crashes through a glass table, and dies. Veronica panics but J.D. urges her to forge a dramatic suicide note in Chandler's handwriting. The school and community look on Chandler's apparent suicide as a tragic decision made by a troubled teenager, making her more worshiped in death than in life. Duke soon steps into the role of clique leader and begins wearing a red scrunchie that had belonged to Chandler. McNamara convinces Veronica to go with her, Kurt and Ram on a double date, during which the boys end up drunk and pass out in cow manure. The following day, they spread a false rumor about Veronica performing oral sex on them, ruining her reputation. J.D. proposes that she lure them into the woods with the promise to "make the rumors true," then shoot them with nonfatal bullets. J.D. shoots and kills Ram but Veronica misses Kurt, who runs away. J.D. chases Kurt back towards Veronica, who realizes the bullets were real and fatally shoots him. J.D. plants material next to the boys implying that they were gay, and a note stating the two were lovers participating in a suicide pact. At their funeral, the boys are made into martyrs against homophobia. Although she keeps dating J.D., Veronica is increasingly disturbed by his behavior. Martha Dunnstock, an obese student, pins a suicide note to her chest and walks into traffic. She survives but is badly injured, and she is mocked for trying to "act like the popular kids." McNamara calls a radio show one night while Veronica and Duke are listening and talks of depression in her life; the next day, Duke tells the entire school about the radio call. McNamara attempts to take her life by overdosing in the girls' bathroom but she is saved by Veronica. She tells J.D. that she will not participate in any more killings. J.D. blackmails Duke into getting everyone to sign a petition that unbeknownst to her is intended to act as a mass suicide note. Veronica has a nightmare where J.D. kills Duke, and she sees the undead Chandler at the funeral. She wakes up and writes what appears to be a suicide note in her diary, then stages a hanging with a hidden harness around her waist to support her weight for J.D. to see as he climbs into her room with a revolver. Assuming she is dead, J.D. rambles about his intent to kill her, had she not committed suicide, and his plan to blow up the school during a pep rally. Veronica reveals to her mother that she is not dead, and at school the next day, she confronts J.D. in the boiler room while he is planting dynamite. She shoots him when he refuses to stop the bombing. As J.D. collapses, his switchblade cuts the wires to the detonator, and it stops. Veronica walks out through the pep rally while everyone is cheering. The severely injured J.D. follows her outside with a bomb strapped to his chest, offers a personal eulogy, and detonates the bomb, killing himself. Veronica confronts Duke, takes the red scrunchie, and vows to change the way things are. She then invites Martha to hang out on prom night and watch movies with her; heading down the hallway while Duke watches. 

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After Margaret Thatcher's resignation, the ruling Conservative Party is about to elect a new leader. Francis Urquhart (Ian Richardson), an MP and the Government Chief Whip in the House of Commons, introduces viewers to the contestants, from which Henry "Hal" Collingridge (David Lyon) emerges victorious. Urquhart is secretly contemptuous of the well-meaning but weak Collingridge, but expects a promotion to a senior position in the Cabinet. After the general election, which the party wins by a reduced majority, Urquhart submits his suggestions for a reshuffle that includes his desired promotion. However, Collingridge – citing Harold Macmillan's political demise after the 1962 Night of the Long Knives – effects no changes at all. Urquhart resolves to oust Collingridge, with encouragement from his wife, Elizabeth (Diane Fletcher). At the same time, with Elizabeth's blessing, Urquhart begins an affair with Mattie Storin (Susannah Harker), a junior political reporter at a Conservative-leaning tabloid newspaper called The Chronicle. The affair allows Urquhart to manipulate Mattie and indirectly skew her coverage of the Conservative leadership contest in his favour. Mattie has an apparent Electra complex; she finds appeal in Urquhart's much older age and later refers to him as "Daddy". Another unwitting pawn is Roger O'Neill (Miles Anderson), the party's cocaine- addicted public relations consultant. Urquhart blackmails O'Neill into leaking information on budget cuts that humiliates Collingridge during the Prime Minister's Questions. Later, he blames party chairman Lord "Teddy" Billsborough (Nicholas Selby) for leaking an internal poll showing a drop in Tory numbers, leading Collingridge to sack him. As Collingridge's image suffers, Urquhart encourages ultraconservative Foreign Secretary Patrick Woolton (Malcolm Tierney) and Chronicle owner Benjamin Landless (Kenny Ireland) to support his removal. Urquhart also poses as Collingridge's alcoholic brother Charles (James Villiers), to trade shares in a chemical company about to benefit from advance information confidential to the government. Consequently, Collingridge becomes falsely accused of insider trading and is forced to resign. In the ensuing leadership race, Urquhart initially feigns unwillingness to stand before announcing his candidacy. With the help of his underling, Tim Stamper (Colin Jeavons), Urquhart goes about making sure his competitors drop out of the race: Health Secretary Peter MacKenzie (Christopher Owen) accidentally runs his car over a disabled protester at a demonstration staged by Urquhart and is forced by the public outcry to withdraw, while Education Secretary Harold Earle (Kenneth Gilbert) is blackmailed into withdrawing when Urquhart anonymously sends pictures of him in the company of a rent boy whom Earle had paid for sex. The first ballot leaves Urquhart to face Woolton and Michael Samuels, the moderate Environment Secretary supported by Billsborough. Urquhart eliminates Woolton by a prolonged scheme: at the party conference, he pressures O'Neill into persuading his personal assistant and lover, Penny Guy (Alphonsia Emmanuel), to have a one-night stand with Woolton in his suite, which Urquhart records via a bugged ministerial red box. When the tape is sent to Woolton, he is led to assume that Samuels is behind the scheme and backs Urquhart in the contest. Urquhart also receives support from Collingridge, who is unaware of Urquhart's role in his own downfall. Samuels is forced out of the running when the tabloids reveal that he backed leftist causes as a student at University of Cambridge. Stumbling across contradictions in the allegations against Collingridge and his brother, Mattie begins to dig deeper. On Urquhart's orders, O'Neill arranges for her car and flat to be vandalised in a show of intimidation. However, O'Neill becomes increasingly uneasy with what he is being asked to do, and his cocaine addiction adds to his instability. Urquhart mixes O'Neill's cocaine with rat poison, causing him to kill himself when taking the cocaine in a motorway lavatory. Though initially blind to the truth of matters thanks to her relations with Urquhart, Mattie eventually deduces that Urquhart is responsible for O'Neill's death and is behind the unfortunate downfalls of Collingridge and all of Urquhart's rivals. Mattie looks for Urquhart at the point when it seems his victory is certain. She eventually finds him on the roof garden of the Houses of Parliament, where she confronts him. He admits to O'Neill's murder and everything else he has done. He then asks whether he can trust Mattie, and, though she answers in the affirmative, he does not believe her and throws her off the roof onto a van parked below. An unseen person picks up Mattie's tape recorder, which she had been using to secretly record her conversations with Urquhart. The series ends with Urquhart defeating Samuels in the second leadership ballot and being driven to Buckingham Palace to be invited to form a government by Elizabeth II. 

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The story is presented in the form of a letter from camp written by a seven-year-old Seymour Glass (the main character of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"). In this respect, the plot is identical to Salinger's previous unpublished story "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls", written 18 years earlier in 1947. In the course of requesting an inordinate quantity of reading matter from home, Seymour predicts his brother's success as a writer as well as his own death and offers critical assessments of a number of major writers. 

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Ivanhoe is the story of one of the remaining Anglo-Saxon noble families at a time when the nobility in England was overwhelmingly Norman. It follows the Saxon protagonist, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, who is out of favour with his father for his allegiance to the Norman king Richard the Lionheart. The story is set in 1194, after the failure of the Third Crusade, when many of the Crusaders were still returning to their homes in Europe. King Richard, who had been captured by Leopold of Austria on his return journey to England, was believed to still be in captivity. 

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Joe Bonham, a young American soldier serving in World War I, awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding artillery shell. He gradually realizes that he has lost his arms, legs, and all of his face (including his eyes, ears, teeth, and tongue), but that his mind functions perfectly, leaving him a prisoner in his own body. Joe later attempts suicide by suffocation, but finds that he has had a tracheotomy that he can neither remove nor control. At first Joe wishes to die, but he later decides that he desires to be placed in a glass box and toured around the country in order to show others the true horrors of war. Joe successfully communicates these desires with military officials after months and months of banging his head on his pillow in Morse code. However, he realizes that the military will not grant his wishes, as it is "against regulations". It is implied that he will live the rest of his natural life in his condition. As Joe drifts between reality and fantasy, he remembers his old life with his family and girlfriend, and reflects upon the myths and realities of war. 

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As the 1864 presidential election drew near, the Confederacy's prospects for victory were ebbing, and the tide of war increasingly favored the North. The likelihood of Lincoln's re-election filled Booth with rage towards the President, whom Booth blamed for the war and all of the South's troubles. Booth had promised his mother at the outbreak of war that he would not enlist as a soldier, but he increasingly chafed at not fighting for the South, writing in a letter to her, "I have begun to deem myself a coward and to despise my own existence." He began to formulate plans to kidnap Lincoln from his summer residence at the Old Soldiers Home, from the White House, and to smuggle him across the Potomac River and into Richmond, Virginia. Once in Confederate hands, Lincoln would be exchanged for Confederate Army prisoners of war held in Northern prisons and, Booth reasoned, bring the war to an end by emboldening opposition to the war in the North or forcing Union recognition of the Confederate government.Smith, p. 109.Wilson, p. 43.Kauffman, American Brutus, pp. 131 and 166. Throughout the Civil War, the Confederacy maintained a network of underground operators in southern Maryland, particularly Charles and St. Mary's Counties, smuggling recruits across the Potomac River into Virginia and relaying messages for Confederate agents as far north as Canada. Booth recruited his friends Samuel Arnold and Michael O'Laughlen as accomplices.Bishop, p. 72. They met often at the house of Confederate sympathizer Maggie Branson at 16 North Eutaw Street in Baltimore. He also met with several well-known Confederate sympathizers at The Parker House in Boston. The Old Soldiers Home, where Booth planned to kidnap Lincoln In October, Booth made an unexplained trip to Montreal, which was a center of clandestine Confederate activity. He spent ten days in the city, staying for a time at St. Lawrence Hall, a rendezvous for the Confederate Secret Service, and meeting several Confederate agents there.Townsend, p. 41.Kauffman, American Brutus, pp. 140–141. No conclusive proof has linked Booth's kidnapping or assassination plots to a conspiracy involving the leadership of the Confederate government, but historian David Herbert Donald states that "at least at the lower levels of the Southern secret service, the abduction of the Union President was under consideration."Donald, p. 587. Historian Thomas Goodrich concludes that Booth entered the Confederate Secret Service as a spy and courier.Goodrich, p. 61. Lincoln won a landslide re-election in early November 1864, on a platform that advocated abolishing slavery altogether, by Constitutional amendment. Booth, meanwhile, devoted increased energy and money to his kidnapping plot.Kauffman, American Brutus, pp. 143–144. He assembled a loose-knit band of Southern sympathizers, including David Herold, George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell (also known as Lewis Payne or Paine), and rebel agent John Surratt.Kauffman, American Brutus, pp. 177–184. They began to meet routinely at the boarding house of Surratt's mother, Mary Surratt. By this time, John was arguing vehemently with his older, pro-Union brother Edwin about Lincoln and the war, and Edwin finally told him that he was no longer welcome at his New York home. Booth also railed against Lincoln in conversations with his sister Asia. "That man's appearance, his pedigree, his coarse low jokes and anecdotes, his vulgar similes, and his policy are a disgrace to the seat he holds. He is made the tool of the North, to crush out slavery."Clarke, p. 88. Asia recalled that he decried Lincoln's re-election, "making himself a king", and that he went on "wild tirades" in 1865, as the Confederacy's defeat became more certain.Clarke, p. 89. Booth attended Lincoln's second inauguration on March 4 as the guest of his secret fiancée Lucy Hale. In the crowd below were Powell, Atzerodt, and Herold. There was no attempt to assassinate Lincoln during the inauguration. Later, Booth remarked about his "excellent chance...to kill the President, if I had wished." On March 17, he learned that Lincoln would be attending a performance of the play Still Waters Run Deep at a hospital near the Soldier's Home. He assembled his team on a stretch of road near the Soldier's Home in hope of kidnapping Lincoln en route to the hospital, but the President did not appear.Donald, p. 588. Booth later learned that Lincoln had changed his plans at the last moment to attend a reception at the National Hotel in Washington — where Booth was staying. 

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